When you’re a kid with food allergies, you get used to feeling left out at big group celebrations. While the rest of the gang dives into pizza and M&M-studded cake, you nibble your allergy-free cupcake.

But for Braxton Young, a second-grader from Ellicott City, Maryland, food allergies (and a little cooking know-how) opened the door to the party of a lifetime – the 2015 Kids’ “State Dinner”, a lunchtime event at the White House hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama.

A budding chef who has multiple food allergies, Braxton, 8, submitted his own original recipe – Quinoa-Crusted Spinach Pie – to the First Lady’s 4th annual Healthy Lunchtime Challenge. He won the challenge for the state of Maryland, then received the invitation to the White House celebration.

On July 10, Braxton and 54 young chefs, selected from nearly 1,000 applicants, joined First Lady Michelle Obama for a lunch featuring several of their healthy recipes.

“I feel excited because I’ve never been to the White House before,” said Braxton shortly before the event. “I want to be an engineer and a president,” says the ambitious youngster.

Braxton learned how to cook from his mother, Kimberly Young, 41, founder of a cooking company called Healthy Little Cooks. “It helps me feel better to cook,” he explains. “I sleep better, and I don’t itch as much.”

Braxton's Quinoa Spinach Pie

Kimberly explains that Braxton had his first anaphylactic reaction at the age of 2. “In a car, in rush-hour traffic.” Since then the family – with six children, ages 4 to 15 – has taken care to keep Braxton safe.

“Braxton is 100 percent gluten-free,” says Kimberly, “and the rest of us are 85 percent. We’re all dairy- and nut-free, and we eat just like him.”

And when Braxton cooks, the eating is good. That award-winning spinach pie, for example? It’s healthy, full of nutrients and protein, but it’s also delicious,” says Kimberly. “All our kids really like it.”

Aside from the White House honor, Braxton was thrilled to get the chance “to show that kids with food allergies can eat healthy.”

Olympic swimming champ Dana Vollmer and other top competitors are powered to win – without gluten. From the Summer 2013 edition of Allergic Living magazine.

For swimmer Dana Vollmer, it was a long-awaited moment: representing the United States in her first Olympic 100-meter butterfly event.

From the age of 12 Vollmer had worked towards this place on the starting platform, enduring serious injuries and illness, and persevering despite a disappointing showing in the 2008 Olympic trials, which kept her from performing in Beijing. After taking time off – and being diagnosed with gluten intolerance and an egg allergy – Vollmer seemed to be on a comeback roll, winning a gold medal for the 100-meter butterfly in the 2011 World Championships.

But this was the much-hyped 2012 London Olympic Games. Could Vollmer, a 24-year-old with a history of heart disease, who subsisted on a diet free of gluten and eggs, perform to Olympic standards?

Could she ever. Not only did Vollmer capture the gold, she set a new world record for the women’s 100-meter butterfly, finishing in a blistering 55.98 seconds. She went on to win two more gold medals in London, for performances in the 4×100-meter medley relay and 4×200-meter freestyle relay.

After setting her world record, Vollmer tweeted proudly about being fueled by a “#GF #eggfree” meal. A year after her Olympic performance, she tells Allergic Living: “I do wonder now, looking back at the difference that changing my diet has made, if I was basically poisoning myself with the egg and gluten. I take it out and all of a sudden my body recovers, I’m stronger and healthier, and I don’t have any injuries now.”

The Olympian’s natural performance enhancement comes as no surprise to nutritionist Melissa McLean Jory, co-author of the bestseller The Gluten-Free Edge. A lifelong athlete, Jory, 63, considers her gluten-free lifestyle a “blessing” not a “diet.” Once afflicted with chronic joint pain and other effects of celiac disease, today she is an active mountain biker and climber on a mission to help others find their own peak performance level.

Jory understands that getting enough nutrients on a gluten-free diet can seem challenging for those with celiac or gluten sensitivity, but says that “it can be done, and it can be fun” with a whole foods-based approach. “You can’t fuel an active lifestyle on crappy food, especially if you have digestive issues that might be limiting your nutrient absorption.”

Vollmer agrees, although she admits to feeling overwhelmed initially by her 2011 gluten sensitivity diagnosis. “It seemed so daunting, like I couldn’t eat anything.”

As a young athlete growing up in small-town Texas, Vollmer had loaded up on carbs like pasta, crackers and dense protein bars, landing in the emergency room with abdominal pain, first at age 13 and twice more by college. “They could never tell me what was causing the pain.”

Nutritionist Melissa McLean Jory

Because she had also suffered a torn ACL, a broken elbow, a disc bulge in her back and a frightening heart issue that required constant access to a defibrillator, Vollmer viewed the stomach pain as minor. But by 2010, with the other conditions on the mend, she addressed the issue.

“I finally didn’t have these other injuries, but I was just exhausted.” Working with former Olympic swimming champion turned nutritionist Anita Nall Richesson, Vollmer began eating egg- and gluten-free, and “in a month and a half, I felt like a different person. All of a sudden I had way more energy.”

Vollmer’s Food Picks

On a typical training day, Vollmer starts with a nutrient-rich breakfast mash-up of rice, nuts, seeds, fruit and milk. Lunch is usually leftover steak or chicken with vegetables or a turkey-cheese melt on a corn tortilla. Her snacks include cheese and Crunchmaster crackers, NoGii protein bars, Royal Hawaiian macadamia nut trail mix and roasted almonds.

A favorite dinner for Vollmer and her husband, swimmer Andy Grant, is steak, sweet potatoes and sautéed spinach. One of her culinary experiments is a “fantastic” vegan lasagna made from raw zucchini “noodles” layered with crushed macadamia nuts, tomato-basil sauce and pesto.

Where once she would sleep between morning and afternoon practice, Vollmer now has midday vigor to do things she loves (like projects in her wood shop). According to Jory, this is likely because Vollmer has achieved an appropriate balance between the basics of sports nutrition: macronutrients (carbs, fats, proteins) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants).

Whether it’s competitive sports, hiking, playing tennis or dog walking, Jory says you can maximize your diet for all-day energy by understanding the role of various nutrients, and which foods supply them. Vollmer’s signature breakfast, for example, combines fast-acting (fruit) and slow-burning (whole grains, seeds and nuts) fuel to keep her energized through practice or competition.

***

Energy and endurance were also major issues for ultra-marathon trail runner Peter Bronski, co-author with Jory of The Gluten-Free Edge. Once a healthy athlete, Bronski found himself sick and struggling in 2005. “It was challenging to run down the street to a stop sign and back, which was just three-quarters of a mile round trip,” he says.

Two difficult years later, an assessment of gluten intolerance led Bronski to embrace a strict gluten-free diet. “Once I did, it was one of the most dramatic turnarounds I’d ever experienced.” Since his recovery, Bronski has competed in adventure racing, off-road triathlons and currently, ultramarathons.

Next: Cutting out gluten: a dramatic turnaround

]]>http://allergicliving.com/2014/02/05/diet-secrets-of-gluten-free-athletes/feed/0Profile: Author John Grisham’s Allergy Mysteryhttp://allergicliving.com/2012/04/10/profile-author-john-grishams-allergy-mystery/
http://allergicliving.com/2012/04/10/profile-author-john-grishams-allergy-mystery/#commentsTue, 10 Apr 2012 19:14:48 +0000http://allergicliving.com/?p=13171He’s known for his bestselling novels and the hit films they inspired: The Firm, A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief, The Client, to name a few. His dashing protagonists unlock secrets, ferret out corruption, and bring culprits to justice. But 14 years ago author John Grisham found himself caught in his own personal thriller, this one a frightening medical mystery.

Something was causing him to experience unnerving allergic reactions, sometimes in the middle of the night. His skin felt “on fire” with welts that would swell and itch – but what was behind the outbreaks? And how to stop them?

After consulting a physician and keeping a log of every morsel he ate for months, Grisham uncovered the bizarre cause of his misery: red meat (beef, pork and other mammals’ meat). What he didn’t know at the time was that the allergy is linked to tick bites. And Virginia, where Grisham’s family lives on a farm, is tick central.

In fact, University of Virginia researchers were among the first to document the tick-meat allergy connection, in part because renowned UVA allergist Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills himself developed meat allergy after being bitten by ticks.

What makes the allergy particularly confounding to track is that it causes delayed reactions, often over four hours after eating meat.

Despite his busy schedule of writing, speaking, and supporting good causes, Grisham manages to keep his allergy in check both at home (in Virginia and Mississippi) and on the road.

The prolific author is always writing – in 2015, he published the legal thriller Rogue Lawyer and the fifth installment in his young adult series, Theodore Boone (the kid lawyer who happens to have asthma). His newest thriller, The Whistler, will be released in the fall of 2016.

The author found time to sit down in his Charlottesville, Virginia office with Allergic Living contributor Mary Esselman to discuss his bedeviling allergy, making frequent reference to his meticulous log notes.

On the beginning of his odd allergy.

“The first [reaction] was in June of 2002. I noticed some rashes on my ankles. I remember thinking, ‘This is weird, both ankles.’” [He didn’t think it was a big deal.]

“Then in July 2002, I went with my wife to an annual garden club dinner, and she had prepared these huge beef tenderloins that I had grilled. And while I was cooking, I was shaving some off to sample. By the time we got to the garden club party, my ears were really, really itching. I got my wife and said, ‘Renee, something’s going on.’

There was a doctor there, and he gave me an antihistamine. My skin was on fire.

So we got in the car, and I was so desperate I stripped down, took off all my clothes but my boxer shorts, and I had all the air [conditioning vents] blowing on me, and you could just see the welts. The skin was just welting up. It almost made me nauseated just watching my skin.”

[He wrote down in the food log that his doctor advised him to keep that it was beef. The penny began to drop.] “It was always beef.”

On developing delayed reactions.

“Two weeks later, we went to a baseball game in Shea Stadium with the kids, and I had a hot dog. And this is when the weird stuff started happening because from that point on [the reactions] were all delayed [by four or five hours after eating]. I’d be asleep – and when you wake up you know you’re in big-time trouble.

I remember standing in the hotel bathroom, Renee was putting damp cloths on my skin, and you can just see it: down your legs, and right into your midsection is where it just really welts up. The inside of your forearms – there have been times when I would scratch until it almost would bleed. You just cannot stop scratching.

So the plot thickens. There were 11 episodes in 2002-2003. By then I’m writing notes to myself, ‘No red meat, you idiot.’ Because it was pork – my favorite pork ribs from a restaurant in Memphis one time – sausage, bacon, ham. Lamb one time. I finally just stopped eating red meat.”

On cheating on the diet – and paying for it.

“Four years go by, and after a while I started eating red meat again. And I got by with it and I’m thinking, ‘This is good’. In 2007, I gave the commencement speech here at UVA [University of Virginia]. Then my wife and my daughter and I came downtown and all had a cheeseburger. That was in May.

In September, Renee fixed some big beef dish, and she had a thick wine reduction sauce, just delicious. And I woke up and thought I was going to die. It was the worst hives and rashes and itching ever. I took two Allegra, got out of bed so she could sleep, went downstairs, and at some point fainted and my head cracked a chair – and broke the chair. Of course I’m hard-headed [laughs] so it didn’t do any damage [to his head].

The last one was November 3rd, my wife’s birthday, 2010. To celebrate, we were in Paris. We went to a fancy restaurant, and I had a very rich rabbit dish in heavy sauce and I woke up about four hours later with yet still the worst case of hives, itching. I had Allegra, and we almost called to get a doctor. But I didn’t want to go to the doctor in a strange city, or a hospital, so we toughed it out.

And that was it. That episode was so bad I said, ‘I can happily give it [red meat] up now’. So I’ve had 15 episodes in 10 years with a gap, oddly enough, when I thought I could eat beef and pork. But I can’t.”

On treating his reactions.

“I always have Allegra nearby. There have been times when I would wake up in the middle of an episode and take the Allegra, and it kills the itching but not the swelling. But you can sleep it off. The next day is ruined; you feel terrible.

When this got cranked up in the summer of 2002, I had an EpiPen close by. Renee was always afraid I was going to have a heart attack or stop breathing, so I carried an EpiPen …. From June of 2002 through July of 2003, that 13-month period, there were 11 episodes, and that’s when I had the EpiPen. And then, I just figured it out. And I’ve only had four [reactions] since then.”

On his wife developing the allergy.

“What’s odd is now Renee has the same affliction. She started about a year ago. We live on a farm – ticks everywhere. And we’re from Mississippi and never had the problem there. We moved here in ’94, and again it wasn’t a problem.

But I think the problem is being seen everywhere around here [Charlottesville]. It’s being studied and all of that. [Renee] has been through it, I would guess, four times with rashes, but nothing as uncomfortable what I’ve gone through. But she doesn’t want to do what I’ve done, so she stays away from red meat.”

On how the allergy affects day-to-day life.

“There are times when you think, boy, I’d love to have a big old steak or cheeseburger or a side of ribs or even, you know, a Bolognese pasta sauce or something like that. But you say, well, it’s not worth it.

Renee is a very healthy cook, and I’ve never had a problem with cholesterol, nor does she, or blood pressure. But it’s a whole lot lower now [laughs], cholesterol. There’s no real drawback. I could easily be a vegetarian. But my wife is also a wonderful cook. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen; we open a bottle of wine every evening about 6 and start thinking about what can we cook, or we go out. But we do eat a lot of chicken. A LOT of chicken.

[Outdoors,] we’re much more careful now. We hike all the time, through the trails. We’re much more careful with the [tick repellant] spray and spray the dogs.”

On trying to explain a tick-related allergy.

“When the article [about red-meat allergy] came out in Allergic Living magazine, I couldn’t wait to run copies and send them to all the skeptics in my life. ‘There you go, take it.’ Because the article’s perfect: this guy’s a doctor at UVA [Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills], and suddenly he’s breaking out in hives, and it’s linked to a tick, and you can’t eat red meat.

I said, ‘There it is, now get off my back.’” [Laughs]

On the worst part of his allergy.

“I guess the worst part is just having an allergy and wondering, you know, where it came from. I hope they figure this all out. I hope – maybe you can take a pill for it someday, or get some immunity …. I’ve always told [my allergist], any time you think I need to go do something – I’ll subject myself to any kind of test. If I can help out, I’m happy to. Thus this interview.”

The Doctor’s Check-Up

Allergic Living asked New York allergist Dr. Paul Ehrlich* to grade John Grisham’s allergy approach.

Top Marks: We like to say, “a good history solves the mystery.” Thanks to a master of the art for validating this point with his methodical record-keeping and observations.

Caution ahead: I’d worry that some chef may add beef or veal stock to liven up a vegetarian recipe or a braised chicken. Cross-contamination accidents do happen, and Mr. Grisham needs to be ready.

Medication use: It’s interesting that he uses Allegra – it’s slow-acting. With food allergies, most allergists recommend Benadryl. Given the severity of some of his reactions, always carrying epinephrine would be an excellent precaution.